Historical units

Feedback's ongoing discussion of alternative systems of units (4 August) rekindled a memory from the 1950s. While working with physicists at Harwell in Oxfordshire, UK, we decided that both the metre-kilogram-second and centimetre-gram-second systems were rather sterile, lacking both culture and history. So we searched for something more suitable.

The result was the furlong-pennyweight-fortnight system, which had a certain ring to it. We even worked out the velocity of light in furlongs per fortnight which, for your interest, is 1,803,000,000,000.

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